


Portraits Of Your Family

by vials



Category: SCP Foundation
Genre: Gen, I guess?? what even is the definition of 'original character' in this universe lmao, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-15 09:06:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12317952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vials/pseuds/vials
Summary: After his father's death, Draven Kondraki sets out to discover more about who he once was.(Shameless fanfic of thefriendlyvandal'sPortraits of Your Father, which in turn started out as a fanfic for my character Draven, who until POYF had not officially appeared on site. We have some inception going on here.)(Posted here as in my opinion it's a little too fanfic-ish to pass as a Tale.)





	Portraits Of Your Family

The air was bitterly cold when Draven emerged from the airport, a single bag slung over his shoulder and a small suitcase in his hand. He stopped for a moment, breathing it in, used to the cold. It hadn’t been the weather that had stopped him in his tracks; more the fact that he was finally stepping foot for the first time in a country that should be home but wasn’t. Draven’s parents had both been born in America, his father in this very state, but Draven had been born in Poland and spent his life divided between there and Russia. The scene around him should feel familiar, and he had expected to feel something more than jetlag. 

His breath clouded in front of his face and he moved to the side, standing by the wall and taking a moment to gather his thoughts. He was still reeling from the impulsive decision to come in the first place, and it was only now that he wondered if it had been a mistake. Perhaps he should have let James come with him after all. He felt a twinge of guilt for rushing off, for insisting that he needed to do this alone, at least for the first time, but he could tell his boyfriend had been worried. Draven couldn’t blame him. It was one thing to go on an impromptu road trip around Poland, but it was quite another to hop on a plane to the States with only vague babblings about _I have to_ and _I’ll explain later_ and _no it can’t wait I need to know._

Draven remembered his phone then, and pulled it from his pocket, swapping it off airplane mode and letting the time and service adjust. He had several messages from James, which was unsurprising, and he was briefly worried when he saw that the three previews were only three of eleven messages; the worry turned to relief when he realised most of them were pictures of the cat with various captions about missing him. Smiling, the cold beginning to sting his exposed skin, Draven tapped out a quick message, letting him know he’d arrived safely and that he would call just as soon as he got to his hotel. Then he shoved the phone in his pocket, took a steadying breath, and went in search of a cab.

*******

“So how is it?”

His boyfriend’s voice was clear down the line despite the thousands of miles between them, and for a moment Draven felt desperately homesick. He swallowed, wondering if he felt a lump there, and then wandered over to the window, looking down at the cars on the street far below him.

“It’s… cold,” he eventually said.

“Colder than here?”

“About the same, I think.”

James laughed. “Any other observations, or is that it?”

Draven managed a weak laugh in return, raising his free hand to tug at his hair. “I don’t know. It’s weird.”

“Weird how?”

“I don’t… _feel_ anything for it,” Draven said, sighing. “I thought I would. This is where—you know, this is where my dad grew up. I thought I’d feel something more.”

“You only just got there.” James was moving around, and Draven could tell from the sounds that he was in the kitchen, fixing a coffee. “You’re exhausted, most likely. You’re not gonna get off the plane and have a religious experience, Draven. It’s not the movies.”

“Yeah, I know,” Draven replied, managing another weak laugh. “I guess I hoped I’d feel _something_ , you know? Even if it was just man, this place sucks.”

“What did your dad say about it?” James asked. The sound of a spoon clinking against a cup. “Did he talk about it often?”

“He mostly told stories.” Draven moved away from the window and almost sat on the bed, before the realisation that that would result in having to be still hit him; he paced the room instead. “About my grandparents, about what he and my aunt would get up to. He did talk major shit about the state, though. He said Illinois was a total dump.”

“Well, is he right?”

Draven gave a small smile. “It’s very grey.”

“You paint such a vivid description, Draven,” James said, sighing wistfully. “It’s like I’m there.”

Draven managed to laugh, properly this time.

*******

Draven’s father had shown him photographs. He hadn’t seen his family in decades but he still had photographs, boxes and boxes of them, brought out whenever Draven grew curious. Sometimes his father had spoken about them at length, laughing and reminiscing and hurrying from box to box as one photo reminded him of another that he absolutely _had_ to show Draven. Sometimes he would sit silently, letting Draven search through them on his own, all too aware of the heaviness in his father’s expression as he flicked through images of vacations and holidays, of a woman with their curly hair and a man with their green eyes, of twin children smiling cheekily at the camera, wanting to ask questions but knowing better at that moment.

He had learned about his great-grandparents that way, on an evening when Ben had been particularly talkative but undoubtedly morose. Draven had dug to the bottom of one of the boxes and found a photograph that was the oldest he had ever seen; faded and tattered around the edges, it showed a strange couple in black and white, three children standing around them and a baby in their lap.

“Who’s this?” Draven asked, before he could stop himself. 

“The little girl standing on the left is your grandmother,” Ben answered gruffly. He had wanted to leave it at that, but found himself dragging himself off the couch and kneeling beside his son instead. “There’s another like it, somewhere.” He dug in the box, past loose pictures and strips of negatives, and finally pulled another old photograph free. Another couple in black and white, this time with three children. “The youngest kid is your grandfather.”

“So these are…?”

“Their parents, yeah. My grandparents. And my aunts and uncles.”

Draven had looked at his father, sensing something in his voice, and was unsurprised to see his jaw was set as he stared at the photograph with determination. Draven didn’t want to ask, but the words tumbled from him before he could stop himself.

“Why are there no other photographs?”

Ben blinked, as though the question had shaken him out of something, and then he let out a short laugh, looking at his son. “They’re dead, kiddo.”

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

“How?” Draven asked, and then he looked harder, and remembered what he knew about where his family had come from, and then he did the math. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Ben had said, wiping at his face, under his glasses, rubbing at his eyes. “Your grandparents were the only ones who made it out, and they were lucky to manage that.”

Draven had thought that would be the end of it but he had gotten the whole story that night, about how Piotr Kondraki and Judyta Wojciechoski, both aged seven, had been bundled into the care of a neighbour on the night the Nazis came to their village, about how they and a dozen other small children had been smuggled into the countryside, how they had hidden in the cold for days, how when they had snuck back to the village one evening they had found everyone gone. Ben had told the story softly, steadily, reciting it from memory: how by the time they had found anybody who could help them their group had gone from fourteen to nine, about how they had been split up, about the hiding and the running and the fear and the constant questions – _where is everybody? what happened?_

Draven listened as his father told him how a well-respected doctor had been their ticket out of Poland, forging papers, hiding their Jewishness, getting them out as a wave of hatred washed away any last hope they had of seeing their families again. They were evacuated briefly to Britain, and then to the States. They were separated and thrown together, separated again, childhood friends and next door neighbours in Poland becoming classmates though sheer luck at age fourteen, huddled together, speaking accented English to their classmates, talking in Polish about when they would see their parents again, not believing it. 

“They officially started dating in their senior year of high school, and the rest is history,” Ben had said with a small smile, and Draven could remember wedding pictures, a sparse but smiling crowd, none of which looked remotely like his grandparents. “They looked, of course, but the truth trickled out bit by bit and I think they always knew. There had been rumours – death camps and the like. They wouldn’t have been told to run if the adults hadn’t believed it. They were in from playing – got out so fast because they were already dressed for the weather. My grandparents expected to dress the other children and send them after them, but the Nazis showed up too quickly. I looked, too, course I did, but I only found a couple of death notices. Safe to assume everyone else met the same fate.”

Draven had been thirteen years old and thought he had understood what _Holocaust_ had meant. He turned to his father with eyes that were stinging and found he had no words to say.

“Hey,” Ben had said, reaching up and brushing Draven’s cheeks with his thumbs. “Those Nazis gave wiping us out a good try, but we’re still here. Remember that. However strange your upbringing is, you belong here.”

Draven had remembered those words as he had walked the streets to school, looking around at the country that against all odds his family had returned to. When later that month their religion teacher had asked for a show of hands for the various religions, Draven had stuck his hand up at _is anyone from a Jewish family?_ and exchanged small, knowing smiles with the others who had done the same.

*******

It was definitely the right house. Draven knew this from the photographs.

He stood a little way down the street, not directly outside because he didn’t want to take the risk that things would proceed beyond his control, and anyway, how could he really be sure his grandparents still lived here? The last time he had checked with his father, there had been no reason to believe they would have moved, and from the last he’d checked through other slightly more controversial means, they were still there. But mistakes could be made, and Draven didn’t think it could be _this_ simple. Besides, he couldn’t just _drop in_ on them. It was just into the New Year; it was a time for celebrations and for spending time with the family you knew about, not for a long-lost relative to show up on your doorstep and tell you your son was dead.

 _Do you think they’d want to meet me?_ Draven had asked once, and Ben had ruffled his hair and told him of course, of course they would, they didn’t have much family left out there and they’d take whoever they could get.

It was that memory that forced Draven to move, walking up the snow-covered pavement, feet crunching far too loudly for the still surroundings. He dragged himself up to the front of the house and forced himself to crunch up the drive, and then before he could think he was standing outside the door, breathing heavily, his fists clenched in his pockets. He could still run. He could still turn around and just leave, go back to the hotel, get flights booked home, go back to James and tell him he’d made a horrible mistake, he should never have gone alone, he needed him there. 

There was a little of Ben’s recklessness in Draven, something James had reminded him of often. Draven supposed he had that to blame for the fact that instead of running, he reached up and pressed the doorbell.

At first there was nothing, and Draven was just growing hopeful that the choice had been taken from him when he heard movement from behind the door. Footsteps approaching, someone tutting, footsteps receding and then returning again, and scrape of a key in the lock. Draven could barely breathe by the time the door was pulled open and he saw his grandmother for the first time.

She was every bit the woman in the photographs, though her hair was white now, even if it hadn’t lost its curls. Her eyes were dark, her skin lined, and she was much smaller than Draven imagined despite seeing her next to his adult father in photographs. They stared at one another for a long moment, Draven struggling to think of anything to say, how to introduce himself, wondering if he had to; he could feel his grandmother’s gaze moving from his eyes, undoubtedly his father’s, to his dark curly hair, again his father’s, to his jacket – how long had his father had this thing for anyway? – and finally back to his face again. 

The first word that Draven ever heard his grandmother utter was _pierdolić_ , a word that he was incredibly familiar with himself, and for some reason he found himself smiling, his mouth twitching and before he could stop himself he let out a short laugh, stifled quickly. Something in his grandmother’s face had softened, and finally Draven remembered how to speak.

“Hi, grandma,” he said, and Judyta’s eyes filled with tears.

*******

It was three weeks after Ben had died and Draven and James found themselves not by accident in the village that Draven’s grandparents had fled decades before. It was a tiny place, a couple of streets and a handful of shops surrounded by a small cluster of houses and, further, farms. The air was fresh and it had recently rained; the sun was coming out again and the colours seemed to be saturated, bright greens and the reds and pinks and yellows of the flowers in the hanging baskets. In the tiny town square there was a memorial and Draven had crouched next to it, seeing his grandmother’s surname etched into the stone; feeling the surreal punch to the chest when he saw his own. James had put a hand on Draven’s shoulder and squeezed and Draven had reached up and grabbed hold of his hand as tightly as he could because suddenly he wasn’t grieving for one man but for a whole family, names etched on stone and nothing else, and all he could do was breathe and feel hot tracks on his cheeks.

The anger had hit him later, when they had been walking in the country, taking a break from the curious and friendly locals; they were walking along the side of a field and ahead of them there were forests and for all Draven knew it was the same forest his grandparents had hidden at seven years old as their entire families had been rounded up and sent to their deaths and suddenly Draven was angry, blindingly angry, striding ahead of James and then stopping, fists clenched, breaths uneven. 

“Why did he do it?” he demanded. James caught up to him as Draven furiously wiped at his face with the back of his hand. “They fought so fucking hard to survive, to get out, to have him, and he just – he fucking –”

His breathing grew too erratic to continue and he was glad for it; the words hadn’t even finished leaving his mouth and already he felt the guilt pooling in the pit of his stomach. 

“Draven –” James began, unsure, and Draven shook his head.

“It’s fine. It’s– I’m being– I’m being awful,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I don’t mean it. I—I get why he did it. I just.” Another breath. “It seems like a waste.”

“You’re here,” James said, quietly, and Draven looked back at the village and thought of his grandparents and it felt like a victory.

*******

They had questions for him. Countless questions. Draven had expected it but nevertheless had never bothered to think about what he might say. In his mind he had imagined it being the three of them but of course that wasn’t the case, not at this time of year. His grandfather looked like an older version of his father and his aunt Alicja looked like his grandmother but also like his father and also like him, if he was honest, and his cousins seemed to be a perfect blend of their mother and father, who apparently had had to work over the holiday season, hence why Alicja was there in the first place, like some cosmic coincidence. They had spoken in hushed whispers and Judyta had briefly offered hot drinks before she had said _pierdolić_ again and brought out the vodka, which everyone gratefully accepted. They sat in a loose circle, his grandfather in an armchair, Draven and Alicja on the couch, Judyta on the other armchair, and Zuzanna and Oskar, his cousins, on the floor.

Draven knew he couldn’t be sure of the direction this would go in, but he wasn’t expecting Judyta’s first question, delivered with all the balance and calmness of someone who had been informed of countless tragedies. 

“Benjamin is dead, then?” she asked, watching him with a steady gaze, and Draven felt his throat go dry.

“How did—?” he began, before realising that was a shitty way to inform somebody of their child’s death. He cleared his throat and tried to dredge up what little of the task force agent he could find in him right now. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

Judyta nodded, her eyes shining again, and exchanged a glance with her husband. Piotr watched her for a moment, and then sighed, shaking his head.

“We never believed he was dead,” he said. His hair was also white, but he wore glasses too, and Draven could see his father in the way Piotr clenched his jaw. “Not for all the decades since he vanished. We only accepted it when Alicja told us.”

Draven turned to his father’s twin. She was curled in the corner of the couch, her cheeks streaked with tears, but she managed a smile when she saw Draven looking at her, and tapped the side of her head with a finger.

“I always knew,” she said quietly, her voice cracking. “I knew he was alive, I knew if he was hurt. And I knew when he died.”

“Tell us now,” Judyta said, her voice still impossibly steady. “Before we move to happier things. What happened?”

Draven dropped his gaze. He had never had to say the words before. He had told people his father was dead. He had told them he had been shot. He had never had to present the words together, and he had never had to say out loud who had shot him.

“He killed himself,” he said, finally, his voice flat. It was the only way he could do it; detach himself, distance himself, adopt the same voice the commanders used when they were breaking the worst kind of news to their teams. “I’m sorry I have to tell you this. He wasn’t well. He was struggling and couldn’t see a way out. He shot himself.”

There was a long silence, during which Judyta and Alicja exchanged what appeared to be a knowing look. Draven didn’t miss how Alicja’s hand went to her hair, tugging on it, her hand moving backwards until she touched at the back of her head, gently, once, and then let her hand drop again.

“I want to be shocked,” Judyta eventually said, her voice soft. “But the more I think about it, the more I did wonder if it would ever be a risk. I don’t want it to be true, but I know in my heart it is.”

They allowed the next silence to go on longer, each of them briefly caught in their own thoughts, until Judyta finally moved to pour them all more vodka, raising her glass with a brave smile.

“Grief comes in shifts,” she said. “There’s no use trying to do it all in one go. We have lost Ben but we have gained you. We don’t even know your name.”

“Draven,” Draven said, to the usual raised eyebrows. “Draven Benjamin.”

“Like the dude from _The Crow_ ,” Oskar put in, grinning, and, impressed, Draven returned it.

“Yeah,” he said. “Exactly.”

Surprisingly the questions came as a relief. The subjects were safe, the mutual curiosity rewarding: time and time again each of them noticed something else that was Ben’s. The way Piotr and Draven would run their hands through their hair and laugh slightly before answering questions; Alicja’s way of teasing; how Judyta would shake her leg and constantly shift her position; Zuzanna’s smile and Oskar’s glasses. Each tiny thing was noted and privately gathered and held close, and before long Draven could barely believe that an hour ago these people had been strangers.

“And he taught you Polish!” Judyta said, laughing and shaking her head. “You speak it like a native.”

“Actually, I was born there,” Draven said, giving a sheepish smile. “And grew up there, actually.”

He didn’t know how they would take that news, but Judyta seemed to recover herself, rolling her eyes and throwing herself back in her chair.

“The little shit! Piotr, did you hear? He goes back and doesn’t send us a darn thing. Do you know how many ingredients I can’t get here? He had better hope it’s a while until I die, because I’ll be finding him.”

They talked about Poland, they talked about what it was like now, they talked about the village, they passed Draven’s phone back and forth and laughed and cried and gasped at how familiar and how different it all looked. They saw photographs of James and asked about him and Draven had a moment of cold dread before he forced out, slightly defiant, that that was his partner, but there was no need for the defensiveness because after a brief moment of surprise the conversation moved on, what’s he like, how did you meet, why didn’t you bring him, and after noting Draven’s insistent nerves a rumble of _I’ve lived through enough intolerance and I’ll be damned if I carry any of it with me_ from Piotr to nodded agreement from the others, and Draven, feeling like a weight had lifted from his shoulders, remembered how nervous he had felt telling his father about James and how his father had had to have learned that tolerance from somewhere. 

“You _have_ to bring him next time you visit – I hope there will be a next time?” Judyta said, as she passed Draven’s phone back to him. “You should have brought him this time!”

“He was busy,” Draven said, giving an apologetic smile. “And I suppose I wanted to you know. Make sure you were still here first.”

“Of course we are. We would never move, not after all the running around we did when we were younger. Anyway, we had to stay here in case Ben came back. Can’t have him looking for us.” Judyta’s voice was calm, and Draven had no idea how she could talk of such things without faltering. “I suppose that’s no longer necessary, but if he had moved then you would never had found us either, and we can’t have that. What does James do?”

“He’s a research scientist,” Draven said, well-rehearsed in the explanation. “He moved to Poland for work. I work security at his research facility and that’s how we met.”

“And Ben?” Piotr asked. “Did he ever do anything with that degree of his?”

Draven managed a smile, hoping that the nerves weren’t noticeable. “Yeah. He worked there, too.”

*******

The office stank of alcohol, which wasn’t unusual. Draven edged in slowly, shutting the door quietly behind him and immediately ruining the effect by kicking an empty bottle. It rolled across the floor and clinked against the leg of a chair, and of course Ben woke up immediately, all shouted curses and fumbling for his gun.

“Dad! Dad, it’s me!” Draven moved to the side just in case, but thankfully by the time Ben had located the weapon on the floor next to the bed he seemed to had registered Draven’s voice.

“Christ,” he muttered, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes before blinking blearily, now looking for his glasses. Draven picked them up off the floor next to the gun and handed them to him. “Christ,” Ben said again. “You could have knocked.”

“I did,” Draven pointed out, giving a small smile. “Several times, actually. You should come home.”

“Nah.” Ben yawned and sat up properly, swinging his legs off the side of the bed. “Too much work. Gotta… gotta get it done. Fuck. My head hurts.”

“Unsurprising,” Draven said, glancing again at the empty bottles. “Can it not wait for tomorrow?”

“So it can join the other ten thousand things that would have piled up by then?” Ben snorted. “Fuck off.” He stood up, stumbled slightly; Draven grabbed his elbow and steadied him. Ben stood for a moment, breathing heavily, and then reached over, patting Draven’s hand. “Got your old man’s back.”

“Someone’s gotta,” Draven said, smiling again, and Ben stared for a moment, still not used to the fact that he was eye to eye with his son now; they were the same height and had been for years, but it was still a shock to him some days.

“I fucking…” Ben began, losing his train of thought, coming back again. “I fucking remember when you were this high,” he said, holding his hand out by his knee. “And you used to sit on my shoe and hold on to my leg and I’d walk around with you sitting there. Christ. Can’t believe you used to be that small.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Draven said, keeping his tone light. “You don’t have to embarrass me, dad.”

“‘Course I do,” Ben replied, now stumbling in the general direction of his desk. “That’s my job.”

He moved around the desk and collapsed into the chair behind it, closing his eyes for a moment and sighing. Just when Draven worried he had gone and fallen asleep again, he opened his eyes and pulled at a drawer, fumbling around inside it before pulling out a bottle of vodka.

“Want some?” he asked, shaking the bottle at Draven, who shook his head.

“I’m still on duty,” he said, and Ben snorted.

“Me too,” he said, taking a pull from the bottle. “Fuck. Look at this shit.”

He gestured to the pile of paperwork on his desk, flowing out of the in tray and all over the surface of the desk, broken only by loose pens and empty coffee mugs in various stages of use. Ben lifted up the corner of a couple of pages, pulled a face, and then looked at the computer instead, waking it from sleep and typing in his password, mercifully correct after only one try.

“Got so fucked up the other night I nearly had security sent down here because I kept getting my password wrong,” he snorted, his eyes moving over the screen, squinting slightly in the bright light. “Now I’ve only got two fucking tries for the next week, until the security settings calm down. It’s a fucking load of—”

He trailed off, something finally grabbing his attention on the screen. Draven watched as his eyes moved over it once and then again, narrowing further, and then Ben muttered something under his breath, took another drink from the bottle, looked again, swore again, typed something with far too much force.

“Dad?” Draven asked, because he felt he should, even though he knew it was in vain – it wasn’t like his father could share anything with him. “Is everything alright?”

“The shit I have to do in this place,” Ben said, venomous, now clicking something rapidly. “The fucking – you wouldn’t _believe._ ”

Ben shook his head and fell silent, and after a few failed attempts at getting him to come home, or to maybe give him a hint as to what was wrong, Draven had no choice but to give up and leave him to it. He had thought his father had handled whatever it was shockingly well, even if a part of him thought it was too good to be true, and therefore it had been no surprise when an hour later Draven was one of the people called to an incident in the break room, which had involved him having to disarm his enraged father and drag him bodily from the room, listening to his screaming bloody murder at some hapless researcher the whole way. Draven bundled him down the hallway and pulled him back into his office and slammed the door and asked him what the fuck and was ready to get angry at him had he not turned to face him again to find the man was crying, shoulders shaking with the force of it, hands tugging at his hair. 

“Dad,” Draven said, helplessly. “Dad. Dad, come on, what’s –”

“You know they’d fucking hate me, right?” Ben had said, his voice thick with tears. “If they knew what I did in this place? You know they’d wish I was dead?”

And Draven, in all his naivety, had assured his father that if there was only one good thing that came of him never seeing his family again, it would be the fact that that would never be an issue.

*******

Draven had spun them a story that afternoon. He would do that for his father, as awful as it was, as bitter as the lies tasted. He knew how to spin a cover story, knew how to leave just enough details open that others would fill in the blanks. His father had been a researcher, too, nothing overly interesting but still important, security clearance, government stuff. Draven had left things open here, implied things there, let his grandparents and aunts and cousins end up with the idea that Ben’s work had been dangerous in other ways, that he had suffered for it in other ways, that he had woken up screaming over other things. That enemies were sometimes made in that line of work, especially if someone was as important as Ben had been. That Ben would have got in touch, but it was a security risk. Can’t have people coming for his family, too. Can’t be compromised like that.

Ben was brave. Ben tried to do the right thing. Ben made mistakes. Ben suffered for them. Ben was doing something for the greater good. Ben had suffered for that, too. 

The circumstances might be different, and his father would have disagreed regardless, but Draven comforted himself with the fact that he hadn’t lied to them about that.

*******

“I wouldn’t have told them even if I’d been allowed.”

Draven sat huddled under the covers in his hotel room, the TV on low for some white noise, James too far away. He pressed the phone to his ear as hard as he could, his eyes closed against the warmth threatening there.

“Where would you even begin?” James asked gently. “I mean, even if you could persuade people of the whole, you know, anomalous elements, it would still be a mammoth task.”

“He used to worry about them knowing,” Draven said, taking a slow breath. He didn’t want James to know he was crying. “He used to say they’d hate him, because he was as bad as the Nazis. You know, doing awful things because he was told to, doing awful things for some intangible greater good. He’d say it was all the same rhetoric – that his parents had taught him to never blindly obey orders, and to never do _anything_ if the _only_ justification was that you were following orders.”

“Draven.” James’s voice was firm but soft, the tone he used when he sensed Draven was edging towards paranoia. “We’ve been through this. It’s not the same thing at all. It’s possible to have to do unpleasant things in the name of something better without being a Nazi. They did it because they were hateful fucks who wanted someone to blame for their problems. We do it because the world will literally end and seven billion people will die if we don’t. It’s… not even in the same ballpark, if I’m honest.”

“I know, I know,” Draven said, sighing. “I just… it felt bad, to lie to them, but I knew I couldn’t even hint at the truth. Dad wouldn’t have wanted it. I want them to remember him like he was. I want his memory to at least have that.”

“You’re not hurting anyone by lying, Draven. And anyway, it’s not like you _can_ tell the truth.”

“I know.” Draven took another deep breath. “Christ, James, it’s… it’s surreal. They all look like him, in different ways. My granddad, he looks like how he would have probably looked had he lived that old. My grandma, she’s all fidgety like him. His sister is just like him, too, her personality. I have cousins as well. They all remind me of him so much. They’ve told me so much about him. They have so many pictures.”

“Tell me,” James said, and Draven rolled onto his back, pulling the covers down and looking up at the ceiling, wondering where to begin.

“He was captain of his school’s fencing team,” he eventually said, focusing on keeping his voice steady. “They never lost a single tournament when he was in charge. He was extroverted as hell when he was younger. He was rarely ever in the house. He was always getting in trouble. He was accident prone and was always in the hospital because he was a dumbass even then. There were like, a million photos of him and Alicja posing in emergency rooms and wards and things, like literally one for every year of their lives. He could cook pretty decently. He started learning piano when he was a kid and taught himself. He picked up guitar at university and taught himself that, too. When he was a kid he would sing in the car and make everyone shut up and if they spoke he’d make them rewind it from the beginning. He’s loved Stephen King his whole life. He visited my grandparents’ hometown, too, when he was travelling the world. He got them photographs of their houses and they told me the address so we can go back and see the exact place. He’d come home sometimes, when he was travelling, just drop in for a week or so and then vanish again and they were so used to it that they didn’t worry about him when they didn’t hear from him for months but then it turned into years and they looked everywhere but couldn’t find him but they never stopped hoping and they never stopped loving him and—” Draven didn’t know when he had begun crying audibly, but it didn’t matter now. “They loved him so much, James. They loved him so much.”

*******

“Why is it just us?”

 _Nine years old and too curious for your own good,_ Ben thought, and of course especially at bedtime. His son was staring up at him with wide green eyes, butter wouldn’t melt, like he didn’t know what a can of worms he was opening.

“What do you mean?” Ben asked, picking up a couple more books and trying to find space for them on the shelves.

“Everyone at school talks about brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents and—”

“Yes, Draven, I think I get it.”

“Where are mine?”

“Well,” Ben turned to look at his son. Draven watched him back, propped up on one elbow where he lay in bed. “You don’t have full brothers and sisters because your mom and I split up before then. You have relatives on your mom’s side, but they’re all in the States. So are mine.”

“But I’ve met mom’s,” Draven protested. “Not a lot but I’ve seen them. What about _yours_?”

“I can’t talk to them,” Ben eventually said, because it was no good lying to his Draven; he had too much of his father and grandmother in him, could see through bullshit at fifty paces. “It’s too dangerous. You know I have an important job. It’s security. I can’t see them.”

“But I do have them, right?”

“Of course you do.”

“Do you miss them?”

Draven saw his father’s face close over briefly, before he sighed, his shoulders sagging. 

“You really know how to make good bedtime conversation, don’t you?”

Draven giggled nervously, feeling guilty. They watched one another for a long moment and then Ben crossed the room, sitting down on the edge of the bed and running his hand through Draven’s curly hair. 

“I miss them a lot,” he said. “But I have you, and that makes it better. You know I love you a lot, right?”

Draven nodded, still a little nervous. He never did know quite where his father would go with these conversations. 

“Even if I’m a bit of an ass sometimes,” Ben said, smiling, and Draven giggled again. “You don’t have to worry about me. You know I’d never hurt you. I’d do anything for you.” A pause. “You’re all I have left in the world.”

*******

“Dad knew when you were hurt, too.”

Draven and Alicja had been walking in silence for some time, out of the neighbourhood and into the surrounding area, rural enough that Draven had no trouble envisioning a child version of his father pedalling his bike furiously towards the trees, yelling about ghosts or cryptids or whatever else he and Alicja were going to be searching for that day. Alicja had pointed out all their favourite spots so far, told him of all the times they had had the shit scared out of them by something that turned out to be totally normal, and then of the times where they had never been able to explain what had happened, and then the conversation had turned to if Draven believed in the paranormal and finally to this – if he believed that Alicja had known, which he did. 

“He used to say that twins always knew,” he added, and Alicja gave a small smile.

“They do,” she replied. “Or, we did, anyway. I’d always know. I’d know when he was hurt, and I’d know when something was troubling him. God, the amount of times I would just _know_ something was wrong since he went missing. I always wanted to help him but I didn’t even have a phone number. Towards the end it was just… constant.” She frowned, her eyes shining again, and the shook her head. “I wasn’t surprised when I realised he’d died. I just knew. Would you believe the second I realised, I developed an awful headache and had to go home from work? It didn’t let up for an entire day.”

“I’ve heard crazier things,” Draven said, and Alicja laughed.

“I always wonder how insane I sound when I talk about this, but our parents believed me. I knew. There was an emptiness there that hadn’t been there before. I still feel it. I always will.”

Draven knew his father’s family had been close, but it dawned on him then that he was walking alongside the person who had been closest to him in the world. Ben’s twin sister, who had known him since before he had even been born; who had grown up with him, known him through every stage of his life, his best friend, a constant presence. They walked along the edge of the field, slowly on the uneven ground, the trees to their right and the air clouding in front of their faces. They both had his green eyes and his curly hair and his sense of humour and his sense of adventure and both of them knew that it was so wrong for them to be walking there without him between them, an arm slung around both of them, his camera around his neck and the air full of memories told in his excitable, exaggerated manner. 

“He would always come back.” Alicja’s voice was quiet, barely audible over the crunch of their feet in the snow. “Whenever he vanished he would always come back. Just as we were starting to worry. When he didn’t, we couldn’t believe it. Years passed, and we were so confused, because I knew he wasn’t dead. And then he was dead, and I thought that’s it, he can’t come back now.” 

A pause. The wind through the trees. Draven wondered what the place had sounded like when his father’s excited voice had been calling to his sister through the trees, _Alicja, check this out!_

“But he did.”

Alicja’s voice again, just as soft. Draven turned to see she was looking at him.

*******

Home.

Unpacking his bags, chatting constantly to James, stories spilling out of him faster than he can finish them. James laughing and following him from room to room, asking questions, making jokes, the two of them unable to be more than a few steps away from one another. Plans to go back, plans to bring James, plans for summer, plans for the holidays. A bag of photographs to sort through, to show James, to find places for. 

The shelf in the bedroom, with its books and James’s glasses and a picture of six year old Draven on Ben’s shoulders and Ben’s camera and some of Ben’s notebooks and the newest picture of Draven laughing and surrounded by people who look like his father.


End file.
